


it can help to know I won't stop feeling wrecked

by reogulus



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Drug Use, Friends With Benefits, Infidelity, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Webcam/Video Chat Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24157390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: They’re on one of those video calls that should have ended an hour ago, but no one bothered to say anything at that point, and so the words exchanged have devolved into semi-coherency at best.
Relationships: Stewy Hosseini/Kendall Roy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 74





	it can help to know I won't stop feeling wrecked

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say, I poured myself three fingers of Jack Daniels and this came pouring out. Title is from "Not Me" by Peach Pit.

“…There’s a thing now that Type A’s actually can’t get addicted, ya know? ‘Cause we _are_ addicted.”

Stewy drops that non-sense factoid out of nowhere, then he does that thing with his finger when he puts the emphasis on _are_ , then he pops another cherry tomato into his mouth; it’s the combination of all these things that makes Kendall laugh. They’re on one of those video calls that should have ended an hour ago, but no one bothered to say anything at that point, and so the words exchanged have devolved into semi-coherency at best. It’s a slow day at work for Stewy in New York, and it’s past 2am in Shanghai. They’ve both just had edibles with each other on video.

Shiv is the spokesperson for that things-are-just-different-when-travelling rule, she never could keep her hands to herself when there’s someone ripe for the taking nearby. Roman’s right: for the supposedly biggest commitment-phobe out of all of them, she really is a faithful adherent. But Kendall feels that the longer he’s been in Shanghai, the closer he comes to succumbing to the rule as well—one month into Shanghai and he wakes up every morning weighed down by the heaviness of feeling like he will never get to go back. Just another assignment from dad that is allegedly a reward but feels increasingly like punishment as time passes.

As a last-ditch effort, Kendall tries to summon the image of Rava’s face, her body warm against his, her hands on him in his mind’s eye. He feels nothing, no yearning or desire or guilt. Maybe that’s just how the weed is hitting him tonight; it’s a pleasant numbness that insulates him from overthinking and ruining it.

“How long has it been since you got dried out in Utah, man? Is it about time I order you a 90-day sobriety chip or some shit like that? See if there’s some international expedited shipping option I can get so it arrives in Shanghai before your birthday.”

“I’m 120 days sober, alright, and fuck you, my birthday was last month.”

Stewy shrugs and shakes his head like he can’t hear Kendall or simply doesn’t want to bother. Could always be a combination of both. “You’ve been smoking weed and puking up baijiu every other day, bro. Are you sure you’re still technically sober?”

“Pretty sure I am, it's just weed and alcohol, and, it’s all about the fucking…technicalities, right? I mean, you’re technically in a monogamous relationship with both your girlfriends.”

“Don’t hate just ’cause I gotta go bicoastal. Shiv gets it, she’s the only one cool enough in your family.”

Kendall rolls his eyes, hard. “What my sister does is none of your business.”

Stewy sucks his teeth, his head lolling back. “The fuck are you still doing in Shanghai, Ken? Your old man hates seeing your face that much?”

“Eight months in Shanghai with a secondment to Hong Kong. That’s the package deal for the succession plan. It’s the only way we’ll make it in time for me to be announced on his eightieth birthday.” He must have explained this to Stewy a dozen times, but he’s fine with saying it one more time. Putting a number on it makes Shanghai feel a little less like forever.

“That’s so not what I was getting at, dummy. We can find someone that can pass for you, I mean, your face is not _that_ memorable, and you know how white people can’t tell Asian people apart? It’s also true the other way around. We’ll just pay the guy to do your time in Shanghai, I don’t know, put a little earpiece on him like the fucking Mission Impossible movies, feed him the corporate bullshit you would say on the daily. And then you can come back and lay low until it’s time you’re actually supposed to be back in New York. I don’t see how we can’t make this work.”

Kendall laughs again, harder and uglier this time, like he's growing hysterical and nearly on the brink of tears. Hearing Stewy talk like this brings him back, both geographically and temporally, like he’s back at Harvard. It’s not just the crazy plans that only sound remotely plausible when they are that drunk or high out of their minds, but Stewy’s willingness to say anything to make him laugh when they are like this, how a part of Kendall secretly wishes and believes that things will actually work out the way Stewy tells him.

That part of his brain is already dreaming about how to buy a plane ticket back to New York without a paper trail, and hide in one of Stewy’s several apartments or townhouses in the city, and how it would kind of be like when he and Stewy dormed together, the good old days. How they went from dormmates to bedmates without ever having a conversation about it, and Kendall still can’t imagine it happening any other way.

Kendall’s laugh quiets down gradually, as his mouth goes dry and his head gets stuck on that thought. He lurches forward, forehead almost touching his desk. It’s not that Kendall only holds onto pleasant memories in this jungled mess of nostalgia taking over his mind right now, about how they were like before their destined paths of life got in the way. As far as memory lane goes, they’ve had their share of winding and bumpy parts, mostly petty resentment for all the times Kendall wanted to talk to Stewy about something genuinely important to him, and Stewy balking at the idea of being tasked to think or talk about something with real stakes when he has no skin in the game. But it worked, for the most part, because Kendall was never quite bored or lonely when Stewy was around. Because most things Kendall did with Stewy were more of a reason to stay with, instead of getting away from, himself.

It’s hard to say if he enjoyed more the attention Stewy paid him, or the other way around—one can probably categorize all the sex they had under “attention” as well. Maybe that’s what his therapist would have called a co-dependency, if he’d started going to therapy as soon as he’d needed it.

His hand moves to hover near his crotch under the table, before his head can fully register the heat rising in his lower stomach. The muscle memory has stayed with him for the better part of twenty years.

“Dude, what are you doing? Are you falling asleep on me?”

Stewy’s voice pulls Kendall back a little. He raises his head to look into the camera, at Stewy’s expression of equal parts confusion, irritation and mild offense. He can’t seem to wipe the stupidly wide grin off his face.

“Fly me back as a stowaway and put me up at your place, yeah? If we do this next week, you can have me all to yourself for at least six months. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Jesus, Kendall, I’m at work,” Stewy gestures lazily to the glass, steel and concrete around him in the background. It’s a beautiful sunny day from the 50th floor and he doesn’t sound mad at all. “You know I don’t like to shit where I eat.”

“Fuck you, and I don’t care where you eat, okay, you’re a fucking scavenger that picks apart corporate bodies for monetary gains, ” Kendall adjusts the angle of his camera, pushes his iPad back further on the desk for a wider view. The still-functioning part—diminishing quickly and willfully by the second here—of his brain is making noises about cyberprivacy concerns, but Kendall dismisses them quickly enough. His hands are all but eager to push down his lounge pants as he stands up to make sure Stewy gets a good view, palming over the bulge of his boxer briefs as he leans over the desk.

“Well,” Stewy’s voice grows thick with interest—that slut. “When’s the last time you had sex? Don’t tell me you actually haven’t slept with anyone since you got there.”

Kendall pauses for a beat. Remembering non-Harvard and non-Stewy things takes particular effort at the moment, and besides, he knows Stewy would just call him a liar if he said he has. “Uh, no, man, give me some credit. My wife is at home taking care of my kids by herself. I’m not gonna do that to her.”

Stewy laughs. “I’ll believe that the day I see Rava putting a chastity belt on you.”

“Right, and wouldn’t you like to watch,” Kendall drops his voice low enough as he shimmies out of his underwear, still standing so the camera shows him only from the waist down, and he watches Stewy’s face carefully. He touches himself with relish through the cotton fabric when he sees a shudder passing through Stewy, upon hearing what Kendall just said. It’s always too fucking easy with Stewy; that’s probably why it has never crossed Kendall’s mind to stop doing this even as a married man, whatever this is.

Stewy pinches his nose bridge as if he has a migraine, his hand covering his forehead like he’s so put-upon right now. “I am not taking anything off,” he says after a second of silence, dropping his hand to yank loose the knot of his tie.

“Suit yourself,” Kendall says, then chuckles; it’s funny because Stewy is wearing a suit and he is not, but it’s mostly funny because he’s high as a kite. His cock, half hard already and getting harder still, stirs against the constraint of fabric. Kendall hooks a thumb under the waistband and pushes it downward just an inch. The friction of the movement is enough to extract a moan from himself.

“You have to sit down, Ken. I can’t see your face.”

“Uh-huh, as if. Indemnification, dummy,” Kendall slurs over the words, as his hands push the underwear down to his knees. He lets them drop to his ankles before kicking them off. “My genitals and my face in the same frame? You’d fucking ruin my life with it.”

“Jesus Christ, Ken. You think I need the money?”

“No, but can I trust you not to hang it over my head? For now and forever?”

“Fucking _fine_ , then,” Stewy snarls into the microphone, and it actually sounds like he’s spitting into Kendall’s ear. It makes Kendall's cock twitch visibly. On camera, Stewy stands up and pushes his office chair back. He unzips the fly on his trousers, reaches his hand inside, and his dick jumps out enthusiastically with much relief.

“Now can we please sit the fuck down,” Stewy says, all agitated as he plops back into his seat and adjusts the camera hastily for the optimal angle.

Kendall sucks in his breath. “You lazy motherfucker,” he curses, and it’s the last thing he says before spitting into his palm and fully stroking his erection with his fist. The friction feels too good from the head to the base, and it suddenly occurs to Kendall that he hasn’t even jerked off for the past two weeks. There was a closing, and then the quarterly audit, and then the board retreat—each of them more exhausting than the one before, he couldn’t catch a goddamn break. His dick certainly welcomes the attention now—from his own hand, and from the other side of the world.

“Sit the fuck down,” Stewy repeats, and Kendall can tell there is an expanding wet spot in the crotch his pants, probably the stain of pre-come. Satisfied, Kendall sinks back into his chair with a shit-eating grin. The unhinged, thirstiest part of him puts both legs up on the table, pulls closer to the lens to put himself on full display.

“Fuck, Kendall,” Stewy says his name through a moan. Kendall can see only the top of his head now as Stewy’s hand gets busy on his own cock. But then, Stewy plucks out an AirPod and puts it next to his crotch.

“You can hear, right?” He says to Kendall, panting, but with that unmistakeable smugness like he’s outmaneuvered Kendall somehow, like he’s fucking shrewd and he knows it. And, yeah, Kendall hears everything loud and clear: the wet sounds of Stewy’s hand working his cock, the hushed moans and quickened breaths that Stewy is probably trying to keep to a minimum volume to avoid drawing attention from his staff.

Technology is a fucking double-edge sword, as everyone likes to say.

“I’m not deaf, so yeah,” Kendall manages to answer. His dick is achingly hard and watching himself on-screen while being watched by Stewy, keeping his legs up like that, are just about enough to blank out what’s left of his thoughts and send him over the edge.

“Don’t turn this into a competition, Ken, because we’ve both already lost,” Stewy’s voice hangs barely above a whisper, and Kendall hates how much he misses it—the feeling of those lips on the shell of his ear, those hands holding him down on the mattress hard enough to leave marks on his hips the next day, the constant struggle between wanting to be heard by Stewy only and not wanting to be heard by anyone else through those paper thin walls of the centuries-old building. Kendall must remember all of it well enough to feel them, on his skin, in his head, all the sensations and memories the blood rushing straight to his cock.

Kendall comes without making a sound, his eyes screwed shut. In the warm, relaxed limpness and emptiness of his post-orgasmic state, he puts his feet back down on the floor, and unwittingly steps in the seed he’s spilled on the rug.

“Jesus,” he curses out of annoyance. His dick is growing soft, but still lies heavy against his crotch. The rhythm of Stewy’s breathing quickens in his ear; Kendall knows he’s also close. Nevertheless, he strokes his dick absent-mindedly, eyes fixed on Stewy working his hand with increasing desperation. It’s hotter like this, with Stewy still pretty much impeccably dressed from the waist up. Kendall traces a slick finger down his taint to his hole, applying pressure just so slightly before he stops his imagination running away from himself.

“Yeah, fuck you, too,” Stewy says these words like they are freshly wrung out of him, panting the way he does so Kendall can make out he’s just reached climax.

They both go silent for a minute, waiting for their breaths to come back to them.

“Did you remember to take that precious screenshot, for insurance, you cynical piece of shit?” Stewy breaks the silence with an acidic accusation. It barely has any teeth.

Kendall chuckles, “Yeah, I’ll sell it to Sandy Furness’s tabloids and use the money to pay for your dry cleaning.”

Stewy scoffs, doesn’t dignify the insult with a retort. “We’ll settle this properly when you’re back.”

“Says the guy who just refused to call it a competition a minute ago.”

“To psych you out, of course—or were you riding your own dick too hard to realize that?”

“Uh-huh, sure. We’ll settle this,” Kendall takes a beat, “like old times.”

“Yeah, but seriously, find yourself a piece of ass in Shanghai and don’t put me in this position again,” Stewy points down at his crotch with an overbearingly petulant look, pulling back from his computer so Kendall can see the splatters, all accusatory like he doesn’t have a full backup suit ready to be changed into as soon as the call disconnects.

“Same time next week, then,” Kendall says. Then he takes the headphones off, waves goodbye at the camera with a smile.


End file.
